The Dangers of Self-Medicating
by LadyDivine91
Summary: Kurt gets sick on a business trip, and everything he does just to get home makes it worse. Klaine. Kurt H. Blaine A.


_**Notes: ****So, I have been feeling a little blue and entirely unmotivated, so I started editing some old work and came across this one. It's the first thing I've laughed at in a couple of days, so I re-wrote it for Klaine (just in case it looks familiar, now you know).**_

"Sir?"

"Mmmrrr … hmmm?"

"Sir? We're here."

"Here?" Kurt's eyelids flutter slightly, opening a sliver. But when the mid-morning sun hits their dry, red surface, he immediately shuts them again. "Where's _here_?"

"15-22 Mulberry Place? It's the address you gave me."

"The address I … wha-?" Kurt pries open his eyes. The address sounds familiar, but the voice speaking to him doesn't. There's a lot of mud and fog cluttering his brain. The last thing he remembers is being in his hotel room, packing his bag. No, it was losing his breakfast, and lunch and dinner from the day before, in an airport toilet. No, no, it was waiting by the curb, clutching on to the handle of his carry-on for support while he waited for his Uber to arrive.

Uber! He's in an Uber! Which means he must be …

"Home?" he says in a raw, grumbly voice.

"I guess." The man puts his car into park. "Do you need any help with your bag?"

"Nah." Kurt grabs the handle of the bag he's been cuddling awkwardly since he fell asleep in this poor man's back seat. At least he didn't vomit in his car. As far as Kurt can remember, he's baptized nearly every toilet and trash can from the airport, to Manhattan, to home. "I've got it." _I'll just pour myself onto the pavement and slither up to my front door_, he thinks. "Here …" Kurt fumbles a hand into his pocket and pulls out his wallet. Squinting, he fishes out three tens and clumsily hands them to the driver. "Thanks for everything."

"Good luck," the driver says, mentally snickering at the intoxicated man doing his best to exit his Prius. _Ten sheets to the wind at barely eleven in the morning?_

_Well, it's five o'clock somewhere._

Kurt backs out of the car butt-first, searching for the ground with his feet to make absolutely certain that it's there. Once they make contact, he extricates the rest of his body, his Samsonite bag landing on the curb with a _thunk_ when his arms fail to support its weight. It takes him longer to stand up straight, the compact blue Toyota gone before Kurt gets his head balanced on his shoulders.

He blinks his eyes and looks around, wondering why his husband isn't there to meet him at the curb. Blaine and Tracy drove him to the airport, but he took an Uber home. And thank God he did. There's no parking anywhere on the street this morning. Of course, he lives here and, hence, has a driveway to pull in to, but still. Strange, but Kurt doesn't have the brain capacity to speculate about that just now.

Kurt has been traveling for most of the morning, voluntarily switching flights twice when a technical malfunction bumped travelers off their plane. He went from first class to coach, then back to first class again. He misses his family, but he came out of the deal with two travel vouchers, a slew of frequent flier miles, and a thousand dollar refund back to his credit card.

Not too shabby for a Sunday afternoon.

He's a stone's throw from home, but the way he's feeling, it might take him the rest of the afternoon to get there.

Kurt turns, taking baby steps, one tiny shuffle at a time with breaths in between to keep the sidewalk underneath his feet. He does the same for the journey up his driveway – shuffle-shuffle pause, shuffle-shuffle pause, bending at the knees on occasion to ground himself and keep from collapsing.

The walk up his driveway to his front door on this beautiful Sunday afternoon is the most excruciating thing Kurt has done in ages.

Correction – pulling out his keys, listening to the God awful things jangle loudly, the noise ricocheting like bocce balls inside his skull, is the most excruciating. Walking up the driveway, and then up the front steps, each movement sending a dull ache searing from the soles of his feet to his forehead, was simply a precursor to this pain.

Kurt doesn't understand how he could have gotten sick. He'd been on top of his Echinacea and his Vitamin C game for a week before he left. He kept his mouth and nose covered with a scarf on the plane, and no one he spent any significant time with looked particularly ill. Then again, he's learned from having a child that sick people are often contagious _way_ before they show any symptoms.

Plague-ridden bastards and their ninja germs bombarding him with their unseen illnesses! He did everything in his power to keep from catching anything, and now he's standing at death's door.

In reality, it's probably from traveling back and forth between coasts after all these years of calm, suburban living. Living in the boonies, away from the dirt and the grime and the smog of the city has lowered his immune system, made him weak on a microbial level.

Clean air and sunshine – it will do you in every time.

His key ring raised to an inch from his eyes, he isolates his door key and pinches it between his thumb and index finger. He tries to stab it into the lock, but he keeps missing, his triple vision causing the end to veer away from the hole at the last minute and hit the door instead.

"Get … in … there," Kurt snaps. "Get … in … that … hole … you stupid … little …" Kurt hears the door unlock and lets go of his key, assuming it made its way into the lock somehow. But the ring falls to the ground with a phenomenal bang. "Shoot!" he mutters, realizing he'll need to bend over to pick it up.

If he does, he may never stand straight again.

The door swings open, the momentum of it almost dragging Kurt forward with it.

"Well, well. Aren't you a sight for sore eyes?" Blaine coos, his body blocking Kurt's way, saving him from falling on his face.

"He-ey!" Kurt says, bright but slow, sounding as drunk as he looks.

"Hey, honey." Blaine gives his husband an enthusiastic, lovesick once-over, but raises a brow at his wrinkled clothes, his unbuttoned collar, his flushed face, and his severely disheveled hair. "How was your trip?"

"Regrettable, to be honest. Ooo, I wouldn't do that if I were you." Kurt throws a hand over his mouth, diverting Blaine's kiss from his lips to his cheek. "I think I contracted bird flu somewhere between Broadway and 75th Street. Or maybe syphilis."

"Is syphilis an airborne disease? Because, if it isn't, I have some questions." Blaine opens the door wider. Grabbing Kurt's bag in one hand and his elbow with the other, he leads him inside.

"Hmm, so do I."

Blaine walks his husband to the sofa and helps him onto a cushion. "So did you miss your plane and walk home?" he asks, retrieving Kurt's keys and closing the front door.

"Very funny."

"I don't want to say you look awful but …" Blaine takes a few steps back to get a good long look at Kurt sinking into the sofa, his head finding the arm and leaning against it. He doesn't look like himself at all – from the hair to the clothes, and beyond his flushed cheeks, his skin actually looks green "… you look _awful_."

"It's not my fault. I took an Ambien last night to help me sleep off this …" Kurt waves a hand in front of his nose "… whatever I caught, but it didn't help. I was coughing and sneezing and tossing all night. By six a.m., I was afraid I'd crash before I made it to the airport, so I took some DayQuil to keep me alert. But I guess DayQuil and Ambien don't play nice together."

"I guess not."

"To top it off, since my plane was delayed, I dropped into what I thought was a Dunkin' Donuts. I mean, the banner over the door looked the same and everything. Turns out, it was some new boutique place called _Drunkin'_ Donuts. I ate two blackberry wine donuts before I realized I was feeling tipsy."

"Uh, but wouldn't the alcohol in the donuts cook away?" Blaine asks, digging his phone out of his pocket and logging on to WebMD to see how much trouble his husband might be in.

"Yeah, in the donut, but not the jam filling. I'm amazed I made it home. After that, everything was kind of a blur."

"Like what?"

Kurt swallows. This was the part he was hoping he wouldn't have to get into until he was better … or _sober_. "Okay, don't get mad, but I may have tweeted David Beckham and told him he had, and I quote, a very bite-able bod?" Kurt admits, eyes begging his husband to please tell him that that was just a dream.

And even though Blaine is quietly panicking over the fact that his husband might need his stomach pumped, he can't help laughing at his man's expense.

"Alas, you did," Blaine confirms. "But in case you didn't see his reply tweet, he claims that you do, too. And his wife concurs, so there's that. Of course, Isabelle jumped on the whole thread and posted it to every social media account _Vogue_ owns. I think you may have raised your stock value with that snafu."

"Thank _God_!" Kurt moans. He knew that tweet wouldn't cost him his job or anything, and he was only mildly worried about what it might do for his home life. But more than that, he was afraid what might happen next time he and Victoria Beckham crossed paths.

She might be petite, but he's heard she's a hair puller.

"What else?" Blaine asks, keeping Kurt awake while he stalls for time.

"I may have ordered everything from pages 23, 24, and 25 of the SkyMall catalogue."

"You do that even when you're _not_ under the influence. I mean, so do I, but ..."

"And I …" And this is the one that may have Kurt crawling beneath the sofa out of sheer embarrassment "… I may have emailed all of our friends and family … using _your_ email account … and invited them here today for, and again I quote, _a surprise party in honor of the wonder that is me_?"

"Right again." Blaine chuckles, laced with concern. "And by the time I checked my email, they had all RSVP'd. They're in the kitchen waiting to yell surprise the second I open the door."

Kurt's eyes pop, his gaze shifting to the door beside him, terrified by this new knowledge that seventy or more people might be on the other side, ready to scream at him.

That alone makes his stomach flip.

_That explains the lack of parking on the street._

"And you couldn't just cancel?" Kurt groans, putting his hands over his ears in preparation for the cheer that's about to run him over like a freight train.

"Of course not. _I_ invited them. And I'm nothing if not a considerate host." But Blaine doesn't open the door. He hits send on a mass text and shoves his phone back in his pocket. From beyond the white-washed piece of wood, Kurt hears the muffled trickle of text alerts going off, accompanied by a rumble of voices muttering in confusion. Someone who could be Mercedes says, "Hey, Bun-Bun! How would you like to go play mini golf with me and your Uncle Sam?"

"Would I?" Tracy squeals, followed by the patter of her footsteps racing to her bedroom upstairs, presumably to get her coat and shoes.

"Wha-what are we doing?" Kurt mumbles as Blaine helps him off the couch, wondering if they're going to go play mini golf with their daughter and her mom. He'd love to, but he's not sure he'd be able to make it farther than the fourth hole. "Where are we going?"

"I thought it might be a good idea if we turned this welcome home celebration into a party of two. And we're holding it at the emergency room."


End file.
